What do your colors say about your brand identity?
Color is any property of light perceived with the eye. So, colors are the characteristic of visual perception described in categories with names such as white, black, red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and purple.
Beyond perception, colors are used to create a strong visual identity for brands. Brand color is an essential part of its identity. Brand elements-logos, stationery, website, souvenirs, and social media pages are created with the brand colors in mind so that people can associate with the brand on the basis of its color combinations alone. It’s one of the first impressions your customers can connect with when they think about you.
Brand colors range from all the colors on the wheel, to a combination of primary and secondary colors to create a shade unique to your brand identity alone. On every single element of your business whether it be the website, stationery, or social media pages.
The psychology of colors in brand identity
The psychology colors show how colors can influence emotions, elicit the right responses from your consumers, and establish your brand. It is the reason many of the world’s popular brands are strongly linked with certain colors.
If we go by recent researches about the relationship between colors and brand recognition, 80% of customers have had their purchasing power influenced by the color of a product, 85% of consumers believe color is the biggest motivator in choosing certain products, and 92% acknowledge visual appearance as the most persuasive marketing factor. This implies that a brand’s choice of colors can affect how people identify with it, they affect the volume of its revenue generation, and in certain contexts, business deals as well.
A more interesting fact is that 95% of the top 100 brands use only one or two colors. This is to show that simplicity is a top consideration in the choice of colors for brand identity.
Colors and their meanings for brands
When it comes to brand identity, there are no random colors as every color is significant for at least one reason. Colors are a means of identification that has a significant effect on the emotional response of viewers to your brand. No brand identity can be created without a color, even if it’s just one.
Here, we’ll explore different colors and what they mean for your brand identity.
Red
The color red is a symbol of energy, passion, warmth, aggression, provocation, and warmth. Brands that are active and energetic tend to use the color red in their logo design. Red is the next best color choice for top brands, coming second after blue.
At the sight of red, your heart is likely to beat faster, as a result of excitement and the associated rush of energy. Red always calls for attention and evokes a visceral response. It is a color for brands involved in heart-racing activities such as entertainment sports and will announce you as a brand that is up to the task.
Yellow
Yellow is a soft and friendly color that evokes warmth, emotions, depth, and clarity. About 13% of top brands use yellow, a color that allows them to identify as an element of positivity and arouse the same in their customers.
Yellow is also associated with sunlight and sunshine, and by extension, rays of hope. It is a happy color that people are quick to relate with either because they are happy or because they want to be happy.
Yellow also stands for hope and optimism and these portray a brand as appealing and motivating, always ready to send rays of light in the least expected times.
Green
Green is a color that represents life, nature, growth, and the calmness of still waters. It is also synonymous with freshness, safety, health, wealth, generosity, and serenity.
The various shades of green can be used to communicate a brand’s commitment to peace, stability, sustainability, and connection to nature.
Blue
Blue represents tranquility and calmness and is often used by brands to convey a sense of order, professionalism, and integrity. No wonder it shows up as the winning color for 33% of the top 100 brands.
Blue is also associated with ease, confidence, and trust at ease. Many financial organizations, therefore, use blue for obvious reasons, and thoughts of the sky’s blue is believed to always send a message of dependability you can bank on.
Black
Black is a timeless color that portrays authentication, class, elegance, power, prestige, and sophistication. If gives a credible look and professional edge to any brand design. You can never go wrong with black if you want to stand out or blend in, especially for a brand that offers luxury products and services.
It can also be combined with other colors to buttress certain emotions without losing the uniqueness or value of their elements. This is why black is a popular color in retail to create contrasts and enhance visibility.
Orange
The color orange is a stimulating color that arouses feelings of energy, creativity, and warmth. It can be sometimes perceived as a loud color that calls for attention by shouting “see me”.
Orange perfectly blends the optimism of yellow with the passion of red to give off an ideal color for outgoing brands. It is synonymous with exuberance, vivaciousness and vitality, and evokes feelings of fun and adventure. It is a creative and cheerful color that evokes a friendly and adventurous feeling.
Purple
Purple is a sophisticated color that’s associated with mystery, elegance, distinction, and royalty. It is also used to denote luxury and quality. As a result, brands that offer higher products use it to create an appealing aura and sense of mystery around their identity.
Brown
Brown is first of all simple, earthlike and natural, and in its appearance. These elements are used to reflect strength and durability by brands that want to be seen as classic and reliable. Brown is also linked with dirt, so there’s a need for brands to choose their shades carefully if brown is going to be the dominant color. With the earth and can also remind people of dirt, so there needs to be careful use of it, especially if it stands out as the main color for a brand.
White
White is the color of purity and cleanliness and goodness. This explains why it is associated with health care brands and child-related businesses. It also represents innocence, simplicity and nobility, and is seen as a color for high-end brands who can live up to expectations.
The various meanings alluded to colors can differ according to cultures and countries. There may also be slight variations on the meaning of colors in a brand’s identity based on the shades and hues of the chosen color and the style of the design they are used in. So, choose your color combinations carefully.
How to choose the right colors for your brand
It is important that you understand the psychology of colors as they relate to your brand’s identity in order to choose a color that is the best fit. You want to have colors that will highlight the strengths of your brand and still appeal to your target audience. How can you achieve this?
Focus
The Brands with great color choices that we admire today did not happen in their colors but rather thought through their options until they got it right.
Imagine Coca Cola in blue…., there would be no vivacity and energetic passion that promises a refreshing taste. So, reconsider your colors in the light of your brand’s goals and the expectations of your target audience. The most impressive color is usually the right one.
Play with colors
There are shades, hues and tints for a reason so that you can have your pick and be satisfied. Don’t limit yourself to what’s obvious or what’s easy when you can experiment with many colors. Be sure to play with at least 3 colors before you decide on one.
You can also create mood boards with colors extracted from random images or color schemes of other brands. Place these colors together and you will most likely find one that resonates with your brand in the midst of it all.
Use psychology to your advantage
This is one of the easiest ways to select a brand color as color psychology helps you use the feelings you want to evoke from your customers to determine the colors your brand should be associated with.
If you want your target audience to be excited at the sight of your product, you may want to consider bold and appealing colors such as red, yellow, or orange. If you’ll rather have a professional and confident appeal, you may want to use blue and white.
Assess your competition
Who are your competitors and what are their brand colors?
There is bound to be at least one significant similarity in these colors. You can afterward decide if you want to use similar colors and blend in or create your own mix in order to stand out.
Choosing the right colors for your brand are part of BDYD and Co’s dynamic branding system, we take the guessing game out of the process. Let us help you bring your brand to life.
